Question

I created a style.css.php file with this code:

<?php

  $gzip = (ob_get_length() === false && !ini_get("zlib.output_compression") && ini_get("output_handler") != "ob_gzhandler" && extension_loaded("zlib") && substr_count($_SERVER['HTTP_ACCEPT_ENCODING'], 'gzip') && !headers_sent());

  if(!$gzip) header('Location: style.css');

  header('Content-type: text/css');
  header('Cache-Control: no-cache');
  header('Expires: Mon, 1 Jan 1901 04:20:00 GMT');

  ob_start('ob_gzhandler');

  include "style.css";
?>

What do you think? Is this a good way to compress js/css files? Is there a better way to do this?
I’m doing this for a public app. that can be downloaded by anyone. So there will be people on shared hosts with gzip disabled

Answer 1

No, not OK. There’s a lot of things wrong there. The include, no dying after redirecting, not considering the deflate method, …

This is very simple to do with PHP, as the zlib output handler automatically detects the appropriate compression to send to the client (if any); all you have to do is enable it:

<?php
if (extension_loaded("zlib") && (ini_get("output_handler") != "ob_gzhandler")) {
    ini_set("zlib.output_compression", 1);
}

readfile('style.css');